I’m kidding about poets. But lots of people need to understand the three basic areas of statistics, Chance, Data and Evidence. Recently Tony Greenfield, an esteemed applied statistician, (with his roots in Operations Research) posted the following request on a … Continue reading →
This is just a local Columbia thing, so I’m posting Sunday night when nobody will read it . . . Samantha Cooney reports in the Spectator (Columbia’s student newspaper): Frontiers of Science may be in for an overhaul. After a year reviewing the course, the Educational Policy and Planning Committee has issued a report detailing [...]The post Frontiers of Science update appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social…
Back in the mid1980s I was a trainee teacher at a high school in Rotorua. My associate teacher commented that she didn’t like to give homework much of the time as the students tended to practise things wrong, thus entrenching … Continue reading →
The desired outcome of this post is to be proved wrong. Here is my assertion: It is really difficult to find appropriate sets of data to use for teaching and assessing statistical analysis. This is a problem; one of the … Continue reading →
One example we give to illustrate Benford’s law is the first digits of addresses. Javier Marquez Pena had a survey and, just for laffs, he looked the distribution of first digits: Cool—it really works! P.S. The y-axis shouldn’t go below zero, and I’d much prefer an L-type graphics box (par(bty=”l”)) rather than the square, but [...]The post Benford’s law and addresses appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social…
Our perception of chance affects our worldview There are many reasons that I am glad that I majored in Operations Research rather than mathematics or statistics. My view of the world has been affected by the OR way of thinking, … Continue reading →
Read Part 1 When making a statement of the form “1/2 is the correct probability that this coin will land tails”, there are a few things which are left unsaid, but which are typically implied. The statement is one about the probability of an unknown event occurring, and it would seem reasonable to write this […]
Frontiers of Science is a course offered as part of Columbia University’s Core Curriculum. The course is controversial, with some people praising its overview of several areas of science, and others feeling that a more traditional set of introductory science courses would do the job better. Last month, the faculty in charge of the course [...]The post Evaluating Columbia University’s Frontiers of Science course appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal…
Pedagogical content knowledge for Statistics Pedagogical content knowledge means knowing how to teach a specific subject, discipline or context. There is a school of thought that the skill of teaching is transferable between subjects, so long as the teacher knows … Continue reading →
Teaching how to write statistical reports It is difficult to write statistical reports and it is difficult to teach how to write statistical reports. When statistics is taught in the traditional way, with emphasis on the underlying mathematics the process … Continue reading →
